Religion and Culture Volunteering: Japan-Korea student exchange program

Yoko Yazawa and Miki Azuma, Fujimi Highland International Club and Yatsugatake Association of Life and Death, Japan 

Presented at the 17th IAVE World Volunteer Conference, November 11-15 2002, Seoul, Korea

Abstract
As we feel it very important to deepen mutual understanding between Japan and Korea as the closest neighbors in East Asia, we have decided to initiate a program aiming at knowing each other’s culture, history, people and society. As the first step for this purpose, we have taken up a volunteer student exchange program for a certain length of time, under which the students will live a life of ordinary citizens, not as special guests and work as volunteers for half a day at local non-profit organizations such as hospital, home for the elderly and public library and so on. For the rest of the day, they are free to socialize with the local people or take up their own pursuits with the help of their local friends where necessary.

The original idea for the above program came from Dr. Kang-Hyun Lee, the director of Volunteer 21 in Korea in February 2001. It was sequentially approved and undertaken by Yatsugatake Association of Life and Death which is represented by Mrs. Yoko Yazawa.

For this program, Dr. Lee sent to Japan Miss Che Jihye as a volunteer student, who stayed in Fujimi Town for approximately 6 months from the middle of June to the end of November in 2001. Miss Che worked at home for the elderly which is affiliated to Fujimi-Kogen Hospital during the morning and after that she gained meaningful experiences at other welfare homes in the area from Monday through Friday. As she was interested in social welfare which happened to be her major in the university, she was happy that she was provided such opportunities elsewhere too. She was also very pleased at working at the library located in the center of Fujimi Town which attracted the spotlight of the media attention because of its unique operation, where she enjoyed helping, learning and meeting town people. In addition to those volunteer activities, we successfully gave her opportunities to talk to both high school students and town people. She gave lectures on the culture and history of Korea as well as the controversial issues concerning Japanese high school textbooks.

We are all hoping that this program will work successfully to serve as a bridge of understanding between the two countries.